Chapter VIII: Part THREE (5)

We are trying to reconstruct whatever mind-picture we have hitherto entertained of that grave of living death, Molokai. But it is no use, and we would best give it up. Eye and brain are possessed of the bewildering actuality, and having expected Heaven knows what lugubrious prospect, we are all at sea. Certain it is that our preconceptions were far removed from the joyous sunny scene now before us, as I rock in a hammock on the Superintendent’s lanai, shaded from the late sunshine by a starry screen of white jasmine. Jack stretches at length on a rattan lounge, cigarette in one hand and long cool glass in the other; and what we see is a serene pasture of many acres, a sort of bulging village green, in the center a white bandstand breathing of festivity. Around the verdant semi-hemisphere, widely straggling as if space and real estate values were the least consideration of mankind, are dotted the flower-bedecked homes of the leprous inhabitants. Breaking gaily into this vision of repose, a cowboy on a black horse dashes across the field and out of sight. A leper. Two comely wahines in ruffly white holokus, starched to a nicety, stroll chatting by the house, looking up brightly to smile Aloha with eyes and lips. Lepers. Jack looks at me. I look at Jack. And this is Molokai the dread; Molokai, isle of despair, where Father Damien spent his martyrdom.

The Settlement lies on a low triangle, a sort of wide-based peninsula, selected by Dr. Hutchinson in 1865, shut effectively off as it is from the rest of the island to the south by a formidable wall rising over two thousand feet against the deep-blue sky—a wall of mystery, for it is well-nigh unscalable except by the bands of wild goats that we can discover only by aid of Mr. McVeigh’s telescope. Every little while, as a sailor sweeps the horizon, he steps to the glass, hidden from the community by the jasmine screen, and studies the land of his charge, keeping track of the doings of the village.

The only trail out of or into this isolated lowland zigzags the bare face of the pali near its northern end, at the seagirt extremity of the Settlement reserve. A silvery-green cluster of kukui trees marks the beginning of the trail not far up from the water’s edge. Thus far and no farther may the residents of the peninsula stray; and the telescope is most often trained to this point of the compass. That trail does not look over-inviting; but we have set our hearts upon leaving Kalaupapa by this route, albeit Mr. McVeigh, who knows what is in our thought, warns that it is undergoing repairs and is unsafe. Indeed, he has gone so far as to hint that it is out of the question for us to ascend now.

In view of the pleasant reality of the island, yesternight’s racking experience seems a nightmare. Over and above pity for the stricken exiles, we were none too comfortable ourselves. In the tiny stuffy staterooms it was impossible to sleep, and except for coolness the populous deck was scarcely less disturbing. Besides the Superintendent, the other passengers were hapa haoles and a white Catholic father with his Bishop, bound for the Settlement to inspect their institutions.

We turned in early on deck-mattresses, after listening to some thrilling yarns from the captain and mate of the sorry little steamer, to say nothing of those of Mr. McVeigh, who sparkles with Hibernian wit. As the miles and time increased between the lepers and the harbor of farewells, they searched out their ubiquitous ukeleles and guitars, and rendered us happier for their presence. All would have been well, and the music and murmuring voices soon have had us drowsing, but for a tipsy native sailor who chipped in noisily with ribald song and speech that was loudly profane.

At intervals the captain and mates issued from their unrestful cubbies on to the short strip of plunging deck (these interisland channels have a reputation equal to the passage between Dover and Calais), and conversed at length in unmuffled accents. To cap my sleepless discomfort, Jack, who had been fighting all night, he avers unconsciously, to wrest away the soft pillow he had insisted upon my using, finally appropriated the same with a determined “pounding of the ear” in hobo parlance. And poor I, lacking the meanness to reclaim it at price of rousing him from his troubled slumber, languished upon a neck-wrenching bolster stuffed, I swear, with scrap-iron. It has since occurred to us that it may have been a life-preserver.

At the chill hour of four, all passengers for Kalaupapa were landed in a rough-and-ready life-boat through breakers which, to our regret, were the reverse of boisterous. We had looked forward to making through a breach of surf like that shown in photographs of Kalaupapa Landing. But it was novel enough, this being let down the lurching black flank of the ship where she rolled in the unseen swell, into an uncertain boat where muscular arms eased us into invisible seats. The merest fitful whisper of air was stirring, and there was something solemn in our progress, deep-dipping oars sending the heavy boat in large, slow rhythm over a broad swell and under the frown of a wall of darker darkness against the jeweled southern sky.

The landing is a small concrete breakwater, into the crooked arm of which we slipped, trusting in the lantern gleam to hands of natives that reached to help. We wondered, entirely without alarm, if they were leprous fingers we grasped, but rested upon fate and climbed our spryest.

The wall was rimmed with sitting figures, and when our twenty-five leper passengers set foot on the cement, some were greeted in low, hesitant Hawaiian speech as if by acquaintances. In the flicker of the swinging lanterns we saw a white woman’s anxious face and two pale hands stretched out. And tears were in my eyes to see the German mother and child united, even in their awful plight.

A silent Japanese took charge of me and my suitcase, and I was carried in a cart up a gentle rise to this cottage smothered in trees, the door of which is reached by way of a fragrant, vine-clasped arbor. The night was almost grewsomely still, and I tried to pierce the gloom to judge how near was that oppressive wall in the velvet black to the south.

The Japanese turned me over to his wife, a small motherly thing who fluttered me into a bright white room with canopied bed, into which she indicated I was to plump forthwith; that the bath was just across the lanai; breakfast at eight; and could she do anything for me?

After breakfast the official “clean” members of the colony dropped in, Doctors Goodhue and Hollmann, the pioneer resident surgeon and his assistant, with their wives, as well as the German-Hawaiian parents of Mrs. Goodhue, who had tramped down the pali the previous day from their ranch in the highlands “beyond the pale,” to visit their daughter. Jack and I promptly registered the thought that if they could negotiate that trail, why not we?

Never have we spent a day of such strange interest. Before luncheon, Mr. McVeigh drove us to within two or three hundred yards of the foot of the pali, to see the Kalaupapa Rifle Club at practice. Quite as a matter of course we sat on benches side by side with the lepers, and when our turns came, stood in their shooting boxes, and with rifles warm from their hands hit the target at two hundred yards. Oh, I did not quite make the bull’s-eye, but there were certain drawbacks to my best marksmanship—the heavy and unfamiliar gun that I had not the strength to hold perfectly steady, and the audience of curious men whose personal characteristics were far from quieting to malihini wahine nerves. We were duly decorated with the proud red badge of the Club, bearing “Kalaupapa Rifle Club, 1907,” in gilt letters.

But fancy watching these blasted remnants of humanity, lost in the delight of scoring, their knotted hands holding the guns, on the triggers the stumps of what had once been fingers, while their poor ruined eyes strove to run along the sights...

It took all our steel, at first, to avoid shrinking from their hideousness; but, assured as we were of the safety of mingling, our concern was to let them know we were unafraid. And it made such a touching difference. From out their watchful silence and bashful loneliness they emerged into their natural care-free Hawaiian spirits.

For, you must know, all leprosy is not painful. There is what is termed the anæsthetic variety, which twists and deforms but which ceases from twinging as the disease progresses or is arrested, and the nerves go to sleep. Another and loathsome form manifests itself in running sores; but Dr. Goodhue now takes prompt action with such cases, his brave, deft surgery producing marvelous results. Tubercular leprosy makes swift inroads and quick disposal of the sufferer. But it should make the public happier to know that here the majority of the patients come and go about the business of their lives as in other villages the world over, if with less beauty of face and form.

In the afternoon Dr. Hollmann took us in charge and showed us first the Bishop (Catholic) Home for Girls, presided over by Mother Marianne, the plucky, aged Mother Superior of Hawaii Nei. Here she spends most of her life, two sisters living with her. Like a tall spirit she guided us across the playground and through schoolrooms and dormitories. In one of the latter we recognized a young girl who came on the _Noeau_ last night. Standing in a corner talking with two old friends whose faces were almost obliterated, this latest comer neither looked nor acted as if there was anything unusual about them. She has a rare sense of adjustment, that girl—or else is mercifully wanting in imagination.

Women seem more susceptible to the ruin of disease, mental or physical, than their brothers—at least they show it more ruinously. I have noticed in feeble-minded and insanity institutions that the eclipse of personality is more complete among the females. Perhaps it is because we are used to especial comeliness in women; and to see a vacant or disfigured countenance above feminine habiliments instead of the sweet flower of woman’s face, is dreadful beyond the dreadfulness of man’s features under similar misfortune.

“Would you like to hear the girls sing?”

_Like_ was hardly the word; I would have fled weeping from what could only be an ordeal to every one. But we could not refuse good Mother Marianne the opportunity to display the talents of her pupils, and a Sister was dispatched to summon them.

Draggingly enough they came, unsmiling, their bloated or contracted features emerging grotesquely from the clean holokus. Every gesture and averted head bespoke a piteous shame over lost fairness—a sensitive pridefulness that does not appear to trouble the male patients.

Clustered round a piano, one played with hands that were not hands—for where were the fingers? But play she did, and weep I did, in a corner, in sheer uncontrol of heartache at the girlish voices gone shrill and sexless and tinny like the old French piano, and the writhen mouths that tried to frame words carolled in happier days. They gazed dumbly at the white wahine who grieved for them—indeed, it would have been difficult to say who was sorrier for the other. Out of their horrible eye-pits they watched us go, and I wonder if Jack’s sad face and my wet cheek were any solace to them. But they called Aloha bravely as we went down the steps, as did a group of girls under a hau tree—one of whom, a beautiful thing, crossing the inclosure with the high-breasted, processional carriage of Hawaiian, showed no mark of the curse upon her swart skin where the blood surged in response to our greeting.

The Bay View Home was our next objective, in which are kept the most advanced cases of the men. Nothing would do but Jack would see everything to be seen—and where he goes and can take me, there does he wish me to go to learn the face, fair and foul, of the world in which we live. Here we found several of our own race who appeared quite cheerful—let us say philosophical. One in particular, a ghastly white old man whose eyes hung impossibly upon his cheeks, spoke with the gentlest Christian fortitude, trying to smile with a lip that fanned his chest—I do not exaggerate. Only one there was who seemed not in the slightest resigned—he who led us among his brother sufferers in this house of tardy dissolution.

“Do any of them ever become used to their condition?”

His terrible eyes came down to my face with a look of utter hopelessness.

“I have been here twenty-five years, Mrs. London, and I am not used to it yet.”

Glancing back from the gate, we saw him still standing on the lanai, straight and tall, gazing out over the sea; a man once wealthy and honored in his world—a senator, in fact. And now there remains nothing, after his two and a half disintegrating decades of exile, but long years of the same to follow; at the end of which he sees himself, an unsightly object, laid in the ground out of the light of heaven.

There is one hope, always, for those of the lepers who think—the shining hope that blessed science, now aroused, may discover at any illuminated moment the natural enemy of the _bacillus lepræ_ which has been isolated and become thoroughly familiar to the germ specialists. Jack, visiting the Kalihi Detention Home and Experiment Station, in Honolulu, was shown the _bacillus lepræ_ under the microscope. Plans are under way for a federal experiment laboratory and hospital on Molokai for the study of the evil germ. The Settlement itself is a territorial care, managed by the Board of Health.

In still another building we inspected the little dispensary, and here met Annie Kekoa, a half-white telephone operator from Hilo, on Hawaii, daughter of a native minister. One of her small hands is very slightly warped; otherwise she is without blemish, and very charming—educated and refined, with the loveliest brown eyes and heart-shaped face. Being a deft typewriter, she is employed in the dispensary to fill her days, for she is unreconciled to her changed condition. Little she spoke of herself, but was eager for news of Honolulu and our own travels. We told her of a resemblance she bears to a friend at home, and she said in a shaken voice: “When you see your friend again, tell her she has a little sister on Molokai.” At the moment of parting, a sudden impulse caused us both to forget the rules, and we reached for each other’s hands. I know I shall never be sorry.

“Major” Lee, one-time American engineer in the Inter-Island Steamship Company, demonstrated the workings of a newly installed steam poi factory. He was in the gayest of humors, and ever so proud of his spick-and-span machinery. “We’re not so badly off here as the Outside chooses to think,” he announced, patting a rotund boiler. And then, with explosive earnestness: “I say, Mr. London—give ’em a breeze about us, will you? Tell ’em how we really live. Nobody knows—nobody has told half the truth about Molokai and the splendid way things are run. Why, they give the impression that you can go around with a basket and pick up fingers and toes and hands and feet. They don’t take the trouble to find out the truth, and nobody seems to put ’em straight. Why, leprosy doesn’t work that way, anyhow. Things don’t _fall off_: they _take up_—they absorb. We’ve got our pride, you know and we don’t like the wrong thing believed on the Outside, naturally. So you give the public a breeze about us, Mr. London, and you’ll have the gratitude of the fellows on Molokai.”

And I thought I saw, in Jack’s active eye, a hint of the fair breeze to a gale that he would set a-blowing on the subject of “the fellows on Molokai.”

When “Major” Lee sailed his last trip on the old Line, the luckier engineers of the _Noeau_, taking him to Kalaupapa, said: “Come on down to our rooms, and be comfortable.” Lee protested—No, it would not be right; it wouldn’t be playing the game; he was a leper now, a leper, do you hear?—and things were different, old fellows.... “Different, your granny!” and with friendly oaths and suspicious movements of shirtsleeves across eyes, the chief and his men had their old comrade into their quarters and gave him the best they had, even to a stirrup-cup—an infringement of orders, as alcohol is the best accomplice of leprosy.

Leaving Kalaupapa, we drove to the elder village, Kalawao, across the mile of the rolling peninsula, a pathway of beauty from the iron-bound, surf-fountained sea line, to the grandeurs of the persistent pali to the south, which is beyond word-painting, unfolding like a giant panorama even along that scant mile. Such crannied canyons, crowded with ferns; such shelves for waterfalls that banner out in the searching wind; such green of tree and purple of shadow. Midway of the trip, Dr. Hollmann turned to the left up a short, steep knoll, from the top of which our eyes dropped into a tiny crater—deep, emerald cup jeweled with red stones, a deeper emerald pool in the bottom, fringed with clashing sisal swords. We came near having a more intimate view of the inverted cone, for a sudden powerful gust of the strong trade that sweeps the peninsula caught us off guard and obliged us to lean sharply back against the blast. Descending the outer slopes of the miniature extinct volcano, we poked around amidst some nameless graves, the old cement mounds and decorations crumbling to dust. The place was provocative of much speculation upon human destiny.

In Kalawao we called at the Catholic Home for Boys, presided over by Father Emmerau and the Brothers, and met up with Brother Dutton, veteran of the Civil War, Thirteenth Wisconsin, who later entered the priesthood, and has immolated himself for years among the leper youth. We found him very entertaining, as he found Jack, with whose career he proved himself well acquainted.

Across the road in a little churchyard, we stood beside the tombstone of Father Damien—name revered by every one who knows how this simple Belgian priest came to no sanitary, law-abiding, well-ordered community such as to-day adorns this shunned region. He realized his destination before he leaped from the boat; and, once ashore, did not shrink nor turn back from the duty he had imposed upon himself. A life of toil and a fearful lingering death were the forfeit of this true martyr of modern times. We have seen photographs of him in the progressing stages of his torment, and nothing more frightful can be conjured.

Never had we thought to stand beside his grave. Just a little oblong plot of tended green, inclosed in iron railing, with a white marble cross and a footstone—that is all; fittingly simple for the simple worker, as is the Damien Chapel alongside, into which we stepped with the Bishop, our fellow passenger on the _Noeau_, and Fathers Emmerau and Maxime, to see the modest altar. Standing before the shrine in the subdued light, it seemed as if there could have been no death for the devoted young priest who came so far to lay down his life for his friends.

* * * * *

After dinner, cooked by the pretty Japanese Masa and her husband, the other household came over to our lanai. And while we talked, in through the twilight stole vibrations of swept strings, and the sob of a violin, and voices of the men’s “Glee Club” that wove in perfect harmonies—voices thrilling as the metal wires but sharpened and thinned by corroded throats. There we sat in plenitude of health and circumstance, while at the gate, through which none but the clean may ever stray, outside the pale of ordinary human association, these poor pariahs, these shapes that once were men in a world of men, sang to us, the whole, the fortunate, who possess return passage for that free world, the Outside—lost world to them.

On and on they sang, the melting Hawaiian airs, charming “Ua Like No a Like,” and “Dargie Hula,” “Mauna Kea” beloved of Jack, and his more than favorite, Kalakaua’s “Sweet Lei Lehua,” with tripping, ripping hula harmonies unnumbered. At the end of an hour bewitched, to Mr. McVeigh’s low “Good night, boys,” their last Queen’s “Aloha Oe,” with its fadeless “Love to You,” that has helped to make Hawaii the Heart-Home of countless lovers the world over, laid the uttermost touch of eloquence upon the strange occasion. The sweet-souled musicians, who in their extremity could offer pleasure of sound if not of sight to us happy ones, melted away in the blue starlight, the hulaing of their voices that could not cease abruptly, drifting faint and fainter on the wind.

Kalaupapa, Wednesday, July 3, 1907.

“Quick! First thought! _Where are you?_” Jack quizzed, as through the jasmine we peered at a score of vociferous lepers running impromptu horse races on the rounding face of the green. Remote, fearsome Molokai, where the wretched victims of an Asiatic blight try out their own fine animals for the prize events of the Glorious Fourth! And all forenoon we listened to no less than four separate and distinct brass bands practicing in regardless fervor for the great day. Laughing, chattering wahines bustled about the sunny landscape, carrying rolls of calico and bunting; for they, too, will turn out in force on the morrow to show how the women of Hawaii once rode throughout the kingdom, following upon that gift of the first horse by Captain Cook to Kamehameha, astride in long, flowing skirts of bright colors—the _pa’u_ riders of familiar illustrations.

Mr. McVeigh, satisfaction limned upon his Gaelic countenance at all this gay preparation, is much occupied, together with his _kokuas_ (helpers), in an effort to forestall another brand of conviviality that is sought by the lepers on their feast days; and, denied all forms of alcohol, they slyly distil “swipes” from anything and everything that will ferment—even potatoes.

But the lusty Superintendent was not too busy to plan for us a ride to the little valleys of the pali. There was an odd assortment of mounts—every one of which, despite the appearance of two I could name, was excellent in its way. Jack’s allotment was a stout, small-footed beastie little larger than a Shetland, and to me fell an undersized, gentle-seeming white palfrey. To my observant eye, Jack _looked_ more than courtesy would allow him to express, for his appearance was highly ridiculous. Although of medium height, his feet hung absurdly near the ground, and his small Australian saddle nearly covered the pony.

We ambled along for a short distance, when our host’s huge gray suddenly bolted, followed by the others, and I as suddenly became aware that my husband was no longer by my side. The next instant I was in the thick of a small stampede across country, the meekness of the milk-white palfrey a patent delusion and snare, while Jack’s inadequate scrap, leaping like a jackrabbit, had outdistanced the larger horses. Every one was laughing, and Jack, now enjoying the practical joke, waved an arm and disappeared down Damien Road in a cloud of red dust.

Pulling up to a decorous gait through Kalawao, we left the peninsula and held on around the base of the pali till the spent breakers washed our trail, where a tremendous wall of volcanic rock rose abruptly on the right. The trail for the most part was over bowlders covered with seaweed, and we two came to appreciate these pig-headed little horses whose faultless bare hoofs carried us unslipping.

Skirting the outleaning black wall, we looked ahead to a coast line of lordly promontories that rise beachless from out the peacock-blue ocean, and between which are grand valleys inaccessible except by boat and then only in calm weather. Two of these valleys, Pelekunu and Wailau, contain settlements of non-leprous Hawaiians, who are said to live much as they did before the discovery of the Islands, although they now sell their produce to the Leper Settlement.

Turning into the broad entrance of a swiftly narrowing cleft called Waikolu, we rode as far as the horses could go, and some nice problems were set them on the sliding, crumbling trail. We overheard the Superintendent’s undertone to Dr. Goodhue: “No malihini riders with us to-day!” which is encouragement that we may be permitted to travel the coveted zigzag out of the Settlement. Then tethering the animals in the kukui shade, we proceeded on foot up a muddy steep where the vegetation, drenched overnight with rain, in turn drenched us and cooled our perspiring skins. Except for the trail—and for all we knew that might have been a wild-pig run—the valley appeared innocent of man; but presently we gained to where orderly patches of water taro with its heart-shaped leaves terraced the steep, like a nursery of lilies, and glimpsed idyllic pictures of grass-houses clinging to ferny ledges of the mountain side, shaded by large banana and breadfruit trees, and learned that in these upland vales live certain of the lepers who, preferring an agricultural life, furnish the Settlement with vegetables and fruit. And we tried some “mountain apples,” the _ohia ai_, as distinguished from the _ohia lehua_ which furnishes a beautiful dark hardwood. This fruit is pear-shaped, red and varnished as cherries, and sweet and pulpy like marshmallows.

Here were also many pandanus trees (_pandanus ordoratissimus_), called _lauhala_ or _hala_ by the natives. Lest one fall into the misconception that the Hawaiian tongue is a simple one, or depreciate the manifold importance of the pandanus, it is interesting to note that the tree itself is known more strictly as _puuhala_; the flat, pointed knives of leaves, _lauhala_; the edible nut growing at the base, _ahuihala_; the flower from which leis are strung, _hinana_. _Aakala_ are the many stilted aerial roots which uphold the tree and even branch downward from some of the limbs. These gradually lift the trunk, at the same time anchoring it to the ground in all directions. They bear a very slight resemblance to the mangrove, but are straight, while the other writhes into an inextricable tangle. The pandanus is also familiarly spoken of as the screw-pine, from the manner in which its sheaves of blades twist in a perfect spiral upon the hole.

The number of its benefits to mankind is rivaled only by the coconut. The _puuhala_, besides furnishing food in the shape of nuts and esthetic pleasure by its orange leis and its tropical beauty, is the staple for mat-, hat-, fan-, and cushion-weaving. Of old, strands of its fiber went to make deadly slings for warfare. The fibrous wood of the mature trees is hard and takes so high a polish that it is used in making the handsome turned bowls that have come to be known as calabashes.

Jack’s imagination went a-roving over the possibilities of the peninsula: “Why, look here, Mate Woman,” he planned, “we could, if ever we contracted leprosy, live here according to our means. I could go on writing and earning money, and we could have a mountain place, a town house down in the village, a bungalow anywhere on the seashore that suited us, set up our own dairy with imported Jerseys, and ride our own horses, as well as sail our own yacht—within the prescribed radius, of course—and let Dr. Goodhue experiment on our cure!—Isn’t it all practical enough?” this to the grinning “Jack” McVeigh, who was regarding him with unconcealed delight, and who assured us he wished us no harm, but for the pleasure of our company he could almost hope the plan might come to pass!

Hours Jack London spends “cramming” on leprosy from every book the doctors have in their libraries. And literally it is one of the themes about which what is not known fills many volumes. The only point upon which all agree is that they are sure of nothing as regards the means by which the disease is communicated. The nearest they can hazard is that it is _feebly_ contagious, and that a person to contract it must have a predisposition. Thus, one might enter the warm blankets of a leper just risen, and, by hours of contact with the effluvia therein, “catch” the disease. The same if one slept long in touch with a victim—and then only if one had the predisposition. But who is to know if the predisposition be his? Certain theories as to the mode of contagion were given us as settled facts by the authorities of the Lazar Hospital in Havana, where we first became interested in leprosy; but that there is little dependence to be placed on these opinions is borne out by at least two known cases on Molokai; one, a native who has remained “clean” though living with a wife so far gone that she attends to her yearly babies with her deft feet; and the other, a wahine who has buried five successive leprous husbands, and has failed to contract their malady.

We recall that in Havana we were assured that no attendant, no Caucasian living for years within the confines of the institution, had ever become afflicted; and the same is held on Molokai—which reports make us, as visitors, feel secure. On the other hand, several of the few white men here assert that they are absolutely ignorant as to the means of their own contagion, not having, to their knowledge, been exposed. One of these is the village storekeeper, a hearty soul whom we have seen riding about in smart togs on a good horse. He possesses but a spot—on one foot—which to date has neither increased nor diminished. When he discovered the “damned spot,” promptly he reported himself to the Board of Health; and here he makes the courageous best of his situation.

No positive cure of leprosy has yet been discovered. But occasionally some patient is found upon bacteriological examination to have no leprosy in him—never having had leprosy. Such are discharged from the Settlement. Nine times out of ten, they do not want to go, and will practice any innocent fraud to retain residence in the place that has become a congenial home.

In some ways the inhabitants of this peninsula are the happiest in the world. Food and shelter are automatic; pocket-money may be earned. Several private individuals conduct stores. The helpers, kokuas, are in the main lepers, and earn salaries. The Board of Health carries on agriculture, dairying, stock-raising, and the members of the colony are paid for their labor, and themselves own many heads of cattle and horses which run pasture-free over some 5,000 acres. The men possess their fishing boats and launches, and sell fish to the Board of Health for Settlement consumption. Sometimes a catch of 4,000 pounds is made in a night. It is not an unhappy community—quite the reverse. And their religions are not interfered with, which is amply shown by the six different churches that flourish here. Also there is a Young Men’s Christian Association.

Long we rested on the Goodhue lanai to-night, and long the shadowy leper orchestra serenaded beyond the hibiscus hedges, while some one recalled a story of Charles Warren Stoddard’s “Joe of Lahaina,” in which a Hawaiian boy, bright companion of other days, crept to the gateway in the dusk, and there from the dust called to his old friend. Forever separated, they talked of old times when they had walked arm in arm, and arms about shoulders, in Sweet Lahaina.

July 4.

This morning we were shocked from dreams by noises so outlandish as to make us wonder if we were not struggling in nightmare—unearthly cackling mirth and guttural shoutings and half-animal cries that hurried us into kimonos and sandals to join our household at the gate where they were watching a scene as weird as the ghastly din. Only a little after five o’clock, the atmosphere was vague, and overhead we heard the rasping cry of a bosun bird, _koae_. In the eery whispering dawn there gamboled a score or so “horribles,” men and women already horrible enough, God wot, and but thinly disguised in all manner of extravagant costumings. They wore masks of home manufacture, in which the makers had unwittingly imitated the lamentable grotesquerie of the features of their companions—the lopping mouth, knobby or almost effaced nose, flapping ear; while, equally correct in similitude, the hue of these false-true visages was invariably an unpleasant, pestilent yellow. Great heaven!—do our normal countenances appear abnormal to them?

Some of the actors in this serio-comic performance were astride cavorting horses, some on foot; and one, an agile clown in dots and frills, seemed neither afoot nor horseback, in a way of speaking, for he traveled in company with a trained donkey that lay down peaceably whenever it was mounted. One motley harlequin, whose ghostly white mask did not conceal a huge bulbous ear, exhibited with dramatic gesture and native elocution a dancing bear personified by a man in a brown shag to represent fur.

And all the while the crowd kept up a running fire of jokes and mimicry that showed no mean originality and talent.

In the silvering light across the dewy hemisphere a cavalcade of pa’u riders took shape, coming on larger and larger with a soft thunder of hoofs, wild draperies straight out behind in the speeding rush, and drawing up with a flourish, horses on haunches, before the Superintendent’s house. The vivid hues of the long skirts intensified in the increasing daylight—some of them scarlet, some blue, or orange, while one proud equestrienne sued for favor with a flaunting panoply of Fourth of July red, white, and blue.

Many of the girls were mercifully still comely, even pretty, and rode superbly, handling their curvetting steeds with reckless grace and ease.

All forenoon these gala-colored horsewomen trooped singing and calling over the rises and hollows of the countryside, to incessant blaring of the bands of both villages combined. The whole was a picture of old Hawaii not to be composed elsewhere in the Territory, and certainly nowhere else in the world. For no set reproduction of the bygone customs could equal this whole-souled exhibition, costumed from simple materials by older women who remembered days of the past, carried out in the natural order of life in one of the most beautiful spots in the Islands, if not on the globe. No description can depict the sight that was ours the forenoon long.

To our distress, we were appointed to award prizes at the race track. We feared hurting the contestants by injudicious choices. But Jack McVeigh pooh-poohed our diffidence, and insisted that we serve on the committee. Horseback we went to the races, and found the track like any other, with its grand stand, its judges, its betting and bickering—the betting running as high as $150—its well-bred horses, and wild excitement when the jockeys came under the wire.

Jack tied his fractious pony, and I saw him on foot over by the judges’ stand, waving arms and cowboy hat and yelling himself hoarse, just as crazy as the crowd of lepers he jostled, who were as crazy as he. Later, he was conversing soberly with a Norwegian and his wife, both patients, who told us we had no idea what it meant to them all for us to come here and mingle among them as friends, and that people were very happy about it. This was good tidings, for the lepers are so little forward in manners that invariably we must accost them first, whereupon they break into the smiling Aloha of their land.

Between heats, there were footraces, and screaming sack races, and races to the slowest, in which McVeigh figured on the rump of a balking donkey, and won; then followed a wahine contest of speed, and a wahine horse race.

But the most imposing event of the afternoon, as of the morning, was enacted by the pa’u riders, who paced leisurely in stately procession once around the course, then circled once in a swinging canter, and, finally, with mad whoopings, broke into a headlong stampede that swept twice and a half around before the Amazons could win control of their excited animals. A truly gorgeous spectacle it was, the flying horses with their streaming beribboned tails, the glowing riders, long curling hair outblown, and floating draperies painting the track with brilliant color—all mortal decay a thing forgot of actors and onlookers alike, in one grand frolic of bounding vitality and youth.

The three prizes were for $5, $3, and $2, and it would not be guessing widely to say that they came out of the private pocket of the Superintendent, along with numerous other gifts during the day. He is not the man to go about with his heart’s good intentions pinned on his sleeve—indeed, a supersensitive character would be out of place as manager of such an institution; but hand in hand with iron will and executive ability, he carries a heart as big as the charge he keeps, and a keen gray eye quick to the needs of his children, as he calls them.

The three beaming winners galloped abreast once around the track, and then rode out; but suddenly the buxom wahine, bright and bold of eye and irresistible of smile, who had taken second, wheeled about and came to attention before the judges’ stand with the request, to our surprise, that I ride once around with her. “Oh, do, do!” Jack under his breath instantly prompted, fearing I might hesitate. Of course I mounted forthwith, and together we pranced the circuit, to deafening cheers.

But I was not riding with a leper, for it turned out that this inviting girl is a kokua, an assistant at the surgery, from whom the bid to ride with her was in the best Kalaupapa social usage.

The Superintendent’s big dinner was a signal triumph, and he handled the mixed company with rare tact, several factions being represented. But even the grave Bishop Liebert and the Fathers warmed to his kindly and ready humor, and soon all were under the spell of Kalama’s perfumed garlands and the really sumptuous feast.

Following several merry toasts, Mr. McVeigh rose and raised his glass to “The Londons—Jack and Charmian, God bless them!” And went on to confess to a warm regard that affected us deeply. For he has given us of his confidence during the past day or two in a way that has mightily pleased us. At the end of the little speech, breaking into his engaging smile, he announced that he knew all present would wish us well upon our departure, which was approaching all too soon etc., etc., and which would be via the pali trail; and that Mrs. London should ride the best horse on Molokai—his mule Makaha!

By the time we arrived at Beretania Hall for the evening entertainment, it was crammed to suffocation with a joyful crowd of lepers, orchestra in place, resting on their violins, banjos, guitars and ukuleles. After they had opened with Star-Spangled Banner and several Hawaiian selections, a willowy young woman, graceful as a nymph but with face as awful as her body was lovely, rendered a popular lightsome song in tones that had lost all semblance to music. Half-caste she is, traveled and cultured, once a beauty in Honolulu, whose native mother’s bank account is in seven figures. And this girl, in the blossom-time of life, with death overtaking in long strides, bereft of comeliness, shocking to behold, and having known the best that life has to bestow, rises superior to life and dissolution, and, foremost in courage, surpasses the gayest of her sisters in misfortune. What material for a Victor Hugo!

At the end of an hour, we left the fantastic company dancing as lustily as it had sung and laughed and ridden the gladsome day through. No one, listening outside to the unrestrained merrymaking, could have guessed the band of abbreviated human wrecks, their distorted shadows monstrous in the flickering lamplight, performing, unconcernedly for once, their Dance of Death.

July 5.

Let none say that great men, capable of noble sacrifice, have ceased from the earth in this day and age. And Dr. William J. G. Goodhue, with his exceeding modesty, would be the first to protest any association of his pleasant name with such holy company. But no outsider, entering upon the scene of his wonderful and precarious operations in tissue and bone diseased with the mysterious curse of the ages, could doubt that he had come face to face with one who spares himself not from peril of worse than sudden death. Although the world at large recks as little of him as it does of leprosy, great surgeons know and acclaim his work, performed bi-weekly at his clinics, where remedial and plastic operations of incalcuable importance take place. His tracheotomies in lepral stenosis have saved many, and have cured or improved conditions of the nose and throat which no other treatment, so far, has been known to relieve.

Ungloved, his sole protection vested in caution against abrading his skin, and an antiseptic washing before and after his work, the man of empirical science waded elbow-deep into the unclean menace upon the operating table. He was assisted by two women nurses, one Hawaiian, one Portuguese, and both with a slight touch of anæsthic leprosy.

The first subject to-day was a middle-aged wahine, jolly and rolling fat, who was borne in laughing and borne out laughing again. In between were but a few self-pitying moans when she raised her head to watch the doctor. We had every proof that she knew no pain, nor even discomfort; but the sight of copiously flowing blood caused her to weep and wail “Auwe!” until one of the nurses said something that made her laugh in spite of herself. The sole of her foot had thickened two inches, and she had not stepped upon it for a couple of years. Into this dulled pad, lengthwise, the cool surgeon cut clean to the diseased bone, which he painstakingly scraped, explaining that the blood itself remains pure, only the tissues and bone being attacked by the _bacillus lepræ_.

But the second patient, a good-looking lad who came on the _Noeau_ with us, was victim of the most loathsome and agonizing sort, which made it necessary to anæsthetize him—Dr. Hollman using the slow and safe “A. C. E.” (Alcohol, one part; Chloroform, two parts; Ether, three parts). The only visible spot was a running sore forward of and below the left shoulder; but what appeared on the surface was nothing to that which the knife divulged.

Although the details are not pretty, and I shall not harrow with more of them, I wish I could picture the calm, pale surgeon, with his intensely dark-blue eyes and the profile of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose kinsman he is, working with master strokes that cleansed the deep cavity of corruption; for it was an illustration of the finest art of which the human is capable.

And now this boy may possibly be quite healthy for the rest of a natural life, and die of some other cause or of old age. Again, the bacillus at any time may resume its destructive inroads elsewhere in his system. There are myriad unknown quantities about leprosy. All that Dr. Goodhue, with his pensive smile, can say about it with finality, is:

“The more I study and learn about leprosy, the less assurance I have in saying that I know anything about it!”

By this evening all troubadour spirit was quenched, and no minstrelsy greeted our postprandial lolling on the lanai. No voice above a night-bird’s disturbed the quiet of tired Kalaupapa. And we also were weary, for seeing the operations, though not our first, claimed a certain measure of nervous energy; besides, we had ridden hard to another rugged valley in the late afternoon, goat-hunting on the crags, and were ready for early bed. In passing, I must not forget to relate that we were shown some black-and-white-striped mosquitoes up-valley, the proper carriers of yellow fever—though Heaven forbid that these ever have a chance to carry it!

Mr. and Mrs. Myers to-day ascended the baking pali on foot, to prepare for our coming on the morrow, when we shall have accomplished the hair-raising exit from Kalaupapa. Now that permission has been graciously accorded, our witty host enlarges continually upon the difficulties and dangers of the route.

Waikiki, Sunday, July 7.

At eleven o’clock yesterday, on our diminutive beasts, we bade farewell under the cluster of kukuis where our friends had accompanied us on the beginning of the ascent, and proceeded to wage the sky-questing, arid pathway, for this section of the pali is almost bare of vegetation. Short stretches as scary we have ridden; it is the length of this climb that tries—angling upon the stark face of a 2300-foot barrier.

They told me, when I bestrode the short strong back of the mule Makaha, to “stay by her until the summit is reached. She never fails.” Implicitly I obeyed, for the very good reason that I would have been loath to trust my own feet, let alone my head. Never a stumble did her tiny twinkling hoofs make, even where loose stony soil crumbled and fell a thousand feet and more into the sea that wrinkled oilily far below; and the hardy muscle and lungs of her seemed to put forth no unusual effort. But Jack and the Hawaiian mail carrier, who led the way, were obliged several times to dismount where the insecure vantage was too much for the quivering, dripping ponies, though they are accustomed to the work. Once, from the repairing above, some rubble came down, fortunately curving clear. Makaha, who has a few rudimentary nerves, shied, but instantly recovered, only to shy again at a bag of tools by the trailside.

Sometimes an angle was so acute that she and the ponies were forced to swing on hind legs to reach the upper zigzag, where poised front hoofs must grip into sliding stones or feel for hold among large, fixed rocks, and the rider lie forward on the horse’s neck. A miss meant something less than a half mile of catapultic descent through blue space into the blue ocean. Once Jack glimpsed destruction from the guide’s horse that slipped and scrambled and almost parted from the zigzag immediately overhead. There were places where it seemed incredible that anything less agile than a goat could stick.

“I don’t wonder McVeigh won’t let malihinis go out this way,” Jack called down, craning his neck to see the base of the sea-washed rampart, and failing. “It is worse than its reputation!”

The Settlement lay stretched in the noonday sun, like the green map of a peninsula in a turquoise sea. And we amused ourselves, while resting the animals, picking out familiar landmarks.

A short distance from the summit we joined the rebuilt portion of the trail, and passed the time of day with the stolid Japanese laborers. Six feet wide, some parts railed, to our pinched vision it appeared a spacious boulevard. Our sensations, now speedily at the top and looking over, may have been something like those of Jack of Beanstalk fame when he found a verdant level plain at the end of his clambering. Here was a rolling green prairie browsed by fat cattle, and threaded by a red road. A family carriage waited, driven by a stalwart son of the Myers’.

The restful two-mile drive through rich pasture land dotted with guava shrub brought us to his home in the midst of a 60,000-acre ranch. There are no hotel facilities on Molokai, which is forty miles long by ten in breadth, and the visitor without friends and friends of friends on the island will see little unless equipped for camping. The climate at this elevation is mild and cool, the hills and ruggeder mountains interspersed with meadows, where spotted Japanese deer have become so numerous that shooting them is a favor to the ranchers.

High Molokai—and the top of it, Mt. Kamakou, is nearly 5000 feet—should be a paradise for sportsmen, and it is surprising the Territory does not get together with the owners and try to develop facilities at Kaunakakai for housing, and transportation into the back country which is surpassingly beautiful and interesting. Somewhere on the coast there is an old battlefield where countless human bones still whiten; and on the rocky coast to the south can be seen in shallow water the ruins of miles of ancient fish ponds equaled nowhere in the group. To the northwest Oahu disturbs the horizon, cloud-capped and shimmering in the blue; while Haleakala bulks ten thousand feet in air on Maui to the east.

This ranch home is buried in flowers, and my unbelief in begonias a dozen feet high underwent rude check. A fairy forest of these surrounds the guest cottage, casting a rosy shadow on window and lanai. I should have been content to remain here indefinitely.

On the ten-mile gradual descent mid-island to the port, Kaunakakai, there was ample chance to observe this aspect of the supposedly melancholy isle, and noticing dry creeks and the general thirsty appearance of the lower foothills, we descanted upon its rich future when irrigation schemes are worked out and applied. As it is now, only in the rainy season do the streams flow, while the amphitheatre-shaped valleys on the other side of the island, set as they are almost directly across the path of the northeast tradewinds, are drenched with tropical rains. Some day these waters will be controlled to make fertile these rich but parched lands.

Dashing native cowboys, bound for a wedding luau, passed us on the road, teeth and eyes flashing, gay neckerchiefs about their singing brown throats, and hatbrims blown back from vivid faces, out-Westing the West.

Kaunakakai itself is not especially attractive, and during two hours’ waiting for the _Iwalani_, we occupied ourselves keeping as comfortable as possible, for July is hot on the leeward sides of the “Sandwich Islands.”

Once aboard, and our luggage, taken on at Kalaupapa, safely located, we watched the loading of freight and live-stock on the little steamer. Between the deep rolling of the ship and the din and odor of seasick swine for’ard, there was little rest the night. And the Steamship Company has a very unceremonious way of dumping its passengers ashore in Honolulu at heathenish hours. The car lines had not yet started when we stood yawning and chill beside our bags and saddles on the wharf, and we were obliged to wake a hackman to drive us to Waikiki. The city might have been dead but for an occasional milk-wagon; but after all we did not grudge ourselves the dawning loveliness of the morning—an unearthly gray-silver luminance wherein a large lemon-tinted moon melted in a lilac sky. It was like a miracle, this swift awakening of the growing earth. Birds stretched into song, the water-taro rustled in a fitful wind, young ducks stirred and fluffed their night-damp feathers on the margins of the ponds, where lilies opened to the brightening waves of light, while the broken slate-blue mountains in the background shifted their graying curtains of shimmering rain. Diamond Head developed slowly into the scene, like a photographed mountain in a dark-room, and took opalescent shades of dove and rose. Creation might have been like this! I recalled Mascagni’s “Iris,” for all living things burgeoned visibly on the warm awakening earth.

All through the busy morning hours, and the surf-boarding and swimming and romping of the afternoon, of all the remarkable impressions of that astounding week on Molokai, the pali endured. Again and again I seem to cling to the incredible face of it, creeping foot by foot, alert, tense, unafraid except for each other...[5]

Waikiki, July 11.

In a fine frenzy to give a just presentation of the Leper Settlement, Jack has lost no time finishing the promised article, “The Lepers of Molokai.”

In it he pictures himself having a “disgracefully good time,” yelling at the track-side with the lepers when the horses came under the wire, and presently branches off into a serious consideration of the situation, interspersed with bright items of life in the Settlement. The article is highly approved by Mr. Pinkham, and Mr. Lorrin A. Thurston avers it is the best and fairest that has ever been written.